EXCLUSIVE – Chip Roy: Democrat Claims About Border Patrol Shelters Are False

U.S. Representative Chip Roy (R-TX) told Breitbart News Daily that many of the claims made by his Democrat colleagues and media about the Border Patrol facilities housing migrant families and unaccompanied minors are false. He blamed the Democrats for not properly funding the facilities despite months of warnings from Border Patrol officials about the crisis.

During an exclusive interview on Breitbart News Daily Tuesday morning, Rep. Roy debunked many of the claims made by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and her fellow representatives about the shelters used by Border Patrol agents to temporarily hold migrant families and unaccompanied minors.

Roy said he has toured these facilities, excluding the Clint facility, many times since becoming the representative for the San Antonio-based congressional district. Last week, he sent his chief of staff to take an in-depth tour of the Clint facility.

The San Antonio congressman said his chief of staff spent hours in the Clint facility and had a full briefing. “What we’ve seen is the truth of what is happening there is very different — very different — from what is being portrayed by the media and by colleagues who are distorting the truth.”

“The claims that kids don’t have showers is false,” he explained. “The claims they don’t have toothbrushes is false. The claims that they don’t have diapers is false.”

Roy continued:

The Hispanic Caucus that are making some of these claims did the tour, the exact same tour, I am told, that my chief of staff took. They saw that there was plenty of water, food, blankets, bunks, plenty of staff, plenty of medical staff on hand, cleaning staff, friendly agents — agents that were playing soccer with the kids.

He explained the tour taken by the Hispanic Caucus included the storage rooms and containers of food, clothing, and other supplies.

Roy explained that the Obama Administration built the Clint facility six years ago to temporarily hold the unaccompanied minors who were crossing the border at that time. “It’s not some old facility — it’s a new facility,” he stated. “It was designed for short-term holding because Border Patrol is not supposed to house people for longer than eight to 12 hours or more than a day.”

He explained the efforts made by Border Patrol officials to rapidly expand the facility to attempt to keep up with overwhelming numbers of migrant families and minors crossing in 2019.

“You had Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez complaining about the supposed drinking of toilet water. Well, that’s nonsense,” Roy stated. “There were coolers [of water] literally right outside [of the rooms] where water is available.”

He said there are sinks connected to the toilets by design–but the water is clean.

The congressman explained this was the same thing he was told and witnessed in McAllen, where Democrat representatives, in particular, toured the facility, praised the Border Patrol agents inside and then “walked right across the street to a camera and looked at the camera and said ‘kids in cages, kids in cages’.”

“The idea that they are turning this into a political stunt just tells you everything you need to know about politics in 2019,” Roy concluded, “about their actual concern and compassion for the kids and the safety and sovereignty of our country and the American people and that they are doing this for cynical political purposes and I’m tired of it.”